German Quality Management Association

The German Quality Management Association (GQMA) is Germany’s largest, and Europe’s second largest, association dedicated to quality management in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Why we chose the term "Good Research Practice" you can read at the end of this text.

By our own periodicals, seminar presentations, and annual meetings (usually held in September each year), we try to achieve a high degree of information and advanced training for the members. Our working groups promote an exchange of views, engage in the evaluation of current topics in the relevant spheres of activity, and represent the GQMA point of view in publications. Contacts with other QA societies and organizations serves the cooperation for conferences and in the evaluation of guidelines in the different GxP areas.

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Objectives:
- Promotion of the exchange of scientific information and opinion,
- Promotion of specific education and training,
- Resulting close contact with other national national and international organizations with the aim of appropriate participation in national and international committees,
- Maintain contact with law-makers or authorities in the sense of the society,
- Promotion of contacts with national or international professional associations of the same area of interest.

History:
The German Quality Management Association (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gute Forschungspraxis, DGGF) was founded as a legal entity in 1995 by 14 members (under the overall control of Stephen Harston) of an informal discussion group which had already been in existence for several years.
Today we have more than 900 members - mainly from Germany, but also from Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain and the USA.

Members work in Research and Development Departments in industry, contract research organisations, central clinical laboratories, hospitals and government agencies.

Our members are quality assurance professionals, study directors, study physicians, test facility managers, archivists and monitors - all with the same interest in good quality in their areas of expertise.

Good Research Practices:
The term "Good Research Practices" is used to describe a mixture of legal requirements and voluntary measures taken by those involved in research and development studies with chemical products (particularly, but not only, pharmaceutical products and agrochemical products) to ensure that the studies are planned, performed and documented in a reliable and transparent way. This is done so that decisions taken based on the reports of these studies are sound and of high scientific quality. The term thus covers "Good Laboratory Practices, GLP" (which relate to the planning, conduct and reporting of so-called "safety studies" [mainly toxicity studies] with pharmaceuticals, agro-chemicals and various industrial chemicals) and "Good Clinical Practices, GCP" (which relate to clinical studies with new pharmaceutical products).